Читать книгу Not pregnant yet? You bet! - Римма Ефимкина - Страница 4

Why do I think the medical approach doesn’t always work? For starters, when dealing with doctors, a woman is called a patient. The word patient comes from Latin (patiens – one who has to be patient, to suffer) meaning a person undergoing medical observation or some kind of treatment because of some disease. Apart from the emotional component (suffering) the word patient has another one, and this is a person being passive, treated like an object. This way a person is supposed to wait while someone does something to change the situation.

Psychologists prefer calling the people they work with clients, not patients. In Ancient Rome a client (comes from Latin cliens, pl. clients) was a free citizen protected by their patron. Client is a general word for a person using some kind of service.

People have been taught by our mass-culture that someone will do something for their wellbeing. They expect that someone will solve their problems, give advice, sympathize with them, write a prescription or judge their offenders. However, if we agree that a person subconsciously created the situation they are in, there should be other ways to help them deal with the consequences of this situation. What would be helpful is activating their internal resources, so that they could deal with the situation all by themselves. This means giving them a rod, not a fish – that’s the way they can become mature, independent and self-sufficient.

When I ask my client a question on what the doctors said, I would like to hear her version of the story, so that I understand how she interacts with people. There is one and the same strategy underlying her interactions with people and interactions with her own body. If this strategy is not efficient, she could change it, and then – and only then – do both her interactions with people and her symptoms change.